World Athletics Championships 2013: Mo Farah ready to be crowned the greatest Briton

Paula Radcliffe retains this comical vision of seeing the young, dreadlocked
teenager Mo Farah in Vilamoura, when the British athletes were sharing the
same hotel as a bunch of old ladies on a Saga holiday.

Going the distance: Mo Farah is likely to be considered the greatest British athlete of all time if he wins the 5,000m gold in Moscow Photo: AP

“He kept jumping into the pool and splashing and they were all complaining, ‘ooo, won’t you control that naughty little boy?’” recalls Farah’s old mentor with a smile here in Moscow.

“So whenever he gets a bit too big for his boots, I just tell him, ‘To me, you’ll always be that naughty little boy.’”

The incredulous thing, laughs Radcliffe, is that the naughty boy could by Friday night complete his graduation to being the greatest British athlete of all time.

That argument, invidious and unwinnable as it may be, has been airing since Farah’s world 10,000 metres title win on Saturday because should he add the 5,000m crown here on Friday night, thus becoming the only man apart from the peerless Kenenisa Bekele to hold the Olympic and World Championship distance double simultaneously, Lord Coe is not alone in believing there will be “no arguments” about his place as the best.

“Should he win, it would be his fifth global title at 5,000m and 10,000m in three seasons and, in the same year he’s also run 3 min 28 sec for 1500 metres. It’s incredible, nothing can equate to that in British athletics history,” adds Radcliffe. “That’s like him being a modern [Emil] Zatopek.”

So Radcliffe, a distance running great in her own right, believes the lad who would ring her for advice has moved beyond that, into a world of achievement inhabited by just a handful of all-time greats. “Now he should really be giving me advice!” she says.

Farah looks so imperious now that, even though he is at a disadvantage on Friday night as one of only two in the 12-man final who also ran the 10,000m (the other being his training partner, American Galen Rupp), it would still feel like a sensation if he lost.

Which would be unfair, reckons Barry Fudge, British athletics’ head of science. “It’s a long shot when you’re doubling up, you don’t what’s going to happen nor how your body’s going to respond,” says the man who has overseen Farah’s preparations at every championships for the past three triumphant years in conjunction with the athlete’s coach, Alberto Salazar.

“It’s so tough for the body to recover that most couldn’t do it. People don’t appreciate what he’s doing; it’s a massive, massive achievement.”

The toll that attempting ‘the double’ on hard Mondo tracks takes on Farah’s body, says Fudge, means it is impossible to know how many years he can keep attempting feats like this but, for the moment at 30, he must make the best of riding a seemingly unstoppable wave of glory.

Radcliffe watched his incredible form in training runs with him last year in Kenya last year – “it wasn’t that I couldn’t keep up, I could barely see him in the end!” – and recognised from her own marathon record-shredding heyday this was a special time for him.

“I remember saying to him, ‘Mo, really enjoy and appreciate this right now because when you’re in it you don’t realise you’re in a golden moment.’ He’s really made the most of his purple patch and that’s why I’d love to see him make his greatness complete by seeing how fast he is capable of running.”

Would a world record end arguments about his position in the pantheon? For you could argue the greatest British athletes are those who not just beat the world more than once but set global landmarks in their events too; athletes such as Coe, Daley Thompson, Jonathan Edwards, Colin Jackson and Sally Gunnell.

Yet Farah has not yet gone record chasing. For instance, his best time of 12 min 53.11 sec, makes him only the 31st fastest 5,000m man in history, while 14 men have run faster than his 26-46.57 for 10,000m.

Even more astonishingly, his 3 min 28.81 sec makes him the sixth quickest 1500m man ever, leaving Coe, a double Olympic champion whose own best was nearly a second slower than that, to give you an argument that running that quickly over a metric mile must have been a much more difficult achievement for Farah even than winning a global 10,000m title.

Next year, though, with no global title at stake, could be the year for a radical redrawing of Farah’s limits, even as he plots his first assault on the marathon in London.

“I would definitely go record chasing next season if I was him,” says Radcliffe. “I’d really like to see that because his best times, good though they are, don’t represent his full capabilities.

“People say, ‘oh, he’s moving up to the marathon so won’t be able to move down and attack records’ but I ran faster on the track after I’d gone up to the marathon.”

The marathon is the great unknown, Radcliffe thinks. “He does have a very loping stride which isn’t always the most efficient for a marathon but he’s so strong and tough, I think he definitely has the capabilities of going sub-2hr 5 min.

"Imagine a 3-28 1500m man doing that; nothing like it, across the whole spectrum of distances, would ever have been seen before.”

That is the real excitement about Farah. It is the tantalising thought that whatever landmarks he is setting, it may be nothing compared to what lies in store should he maintain his drive.

Fudge fancies he will. “There will probably come a day when he gets fed up with it but we’re not anywhere near that just now. His desire is incredible.

"When you’re sitting on top of a mountain, you’re doing 130 miles a week and haven’t seen your family for four months, that’s b----- hard, a sacrifice that guards against complacency.”

There can be no complacency on Friday night, with wily old foes such as American Bernard Lagat and Ethiopian young gun Hagos Gebrhiwet on hand to test him.

Yet both Radcliffe and Steve Cram feel that Farah is also fortunate to find himself up against what is not a rare vintage crop of African contenders, with no one of the stature of, say, Gebrselassie or Paul Tergat to challenge him in the 10,000m, nor with the speed of a Hicham El Guerrouj or Said Aouita to tackle him in the 5,000.

Let us put it this way. Farah does not sound overly worried. Asked for a message for the British public before his latest quest for glory, he will tell BBC viewers: “Chill out. Have a cup of tea. Mo’s on the track.”

Sounds just like that naughty little boy!

Mo’s main rivals

Yenew Alamirew (Ethiopia): He forced Farah to dig deep to outkick him at the Birmingham Diamond League meeting. With fresher legs after skipping the 10,000 metres, he poses a major threat.

Edwin Soi (Kenya): The only man to beat Farah this year, albeit when the Londoner was recovering from a virus, and the quickest 5,000m runner in the world this year.

Hagos Gebrhiwet (Ethiopia): Looked like being Farah’s main 5,000m rival after early-season wins in Doha and New York but needs to rediscover his form after recent reverses.

Isaiah Koech (Kenya): A decisive winner at the recent Kenyan trials, beating Soi in the process, but he is only 19 and his inexperience could count against him. (Simon Hart)